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 The China Threat
by Bill Gertz
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The B-2 stealth bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, around 9:00 am. It was Friday, May 7, 1999. Flying nonstop and refueling in midflight over the Atlantic Ocean near Britain, the aircraft were nearly invisible to Serbian air defense radar as they approached the Balkans. One of the aircraft reached the skies over the capital of Belgrade around midnight and launched five Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAM, bombs. The 2,000-pound high-explosive weapons are among the most advanced precision-guided bombs in the U.S. conventional arsenal. The JDAMs maneuvered precisely to their targets with the help of signals sent by satellites that are part of the Global Positioning System, the navigation system used by boaters and military alike. Three of the bombs slammed into a building in downtown Belgrade that U.S. and NATO targeters believed was a key Yugoslav army weapons-buying facility.
In fact, the bombs rocked the embassy of the People’s Republic of China. Ten days later, a top secret report was completed by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The report was based on intelligence from the headquarters of the Ministry of State Security, China’s civilian intelligence service, and was sent to what remained of the Belgrade embassy’s intelligence station. “Chinese embassy personnel in Belgrade were instructed… to collect missile fragments from the bombed embassy building and send them back to China, probably aboard the aircraft chartered to evacuate injured embassy personnel,” the report said. Three Chinese nationals were killed in the bombing, and about twenty-seven others were injured. The DIA report went on to state: “Separately, an internal Chinese ministry level document revealed that the secure communications area and the defense attaché office within the Chinese embassy received the most damage from the NATO attack.... [The Chinese] also believed that NATO had intentionally hit the embassy as part of a larger conspiracy to drag China into the crisis.” The report also indicated that a Chinese news organization “relayed guidance for reporting on the situation relating to the bombing.” “The guidance, probably sent nationwide, instructed reporters not to report that NATO’s attack was accidental and to focus on the U.S. government, citizens and investors,” the report said. “Reporters are forbidden from covering demonstrations targeting any NATO countries except the United States.” The intelligence exposed how China’s communist leaders were using the state-controlled news media to focus public anger on the United States, which China views as the “world hegemon” to be stopped by less powerful states led by China. Riots by Chinese were orchestrated by government officials, and the American ambassador, James Sasser, was forced to remain holed up in the embassy while mobs of people stoned the consulate building. This was just a small, visible part of a new Cold War against the United States on the part of the communist government in Beijing. A day after the bombing, an official Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman issued a statement condemning the blast: “This act by NATO is a gross violation of China’s sovereignty and a willful trampling on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as well as the basic norms governing international relations. This is rarely seen in the history of diplomacy.” The statement also included a not-so-subtle threat that received virtually no attention from the U.S. news media. “The U.S.-led NATO must bear all responsibilities arising therefrom. The Chinese Government reserves the right to take further actions on the matter.” In essence, the communist government in Beijing viewed the attack as deliberate and tantamount to an act of war. The reference to “further action” was a sign that Beijing would not allow the action to go unanswered. Inside the Pentagon, military planners working on the Kosovo operations around the clock had to consider the worst possible outcome of the errant bombing: retaliation. China’s options ranged from providing diplomatic support to Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic all the way to conventional and possibly even nuclear conflict with the United States. Vociferous and repeated public apologies by Bill Clinton and other high-ranking administration officials appeared to be enough to mollify China’s communist rulers temporarily. No troop movements or preparations for launching long-range nuclear missiles were ever detected. It was unlikely that China even contemplated the action, but under the circumstances no one could be certain, especially given the portrait of an aggressive China that was emerging from top secret intelligence intercepts. Communist China Plan
Three years earlier, in May 1997, a U.S. Air Force RC-135 intelligence-gathering jet took off from Kadena Air Base, Japan. The reconnaissance aircraft bristled with electronic spying equipment sensitive enough to pick out individual telephone conversations from the millions of signals in the airwaves over China. The jet flew along a flight path parallel to the coast of China about fifty miles offshore. The ultrasensitive electronic eavesdropping equipment on the militarized Boeing aircraft swept the airwaves during the nine-hour flight. In secret reports, the flights are given code names like “Bachelor Warrior,” “Beggar Hawk,” and “Distant Wind.” The plane’s electronic ears can hear as far away as western China, into the remote Xinjiang region, where Beijing conducts nuclear testing. This spring mission produced a rare intelligence gem. No Chinese interceptor jets diverted the plane, and a wealth of intelligence was recorded and passed on to analysts at the Pentagon. The analysts began the task of separating the valuable material from mundane military information. The intelligence was polished and given a code word that assigned it a rank within the “Top Secret” designation. “Moray” is the first level of Top Secret. Then comes “Umbra.” The most sensitive data is “Gamma.” Within a few days, the intelligence analysts had discovered that a senior Chinese Communist official had had a secret meeting with Sean Garland, managing director of a Dublin, Ireland, company identified in the intelligence report as GKG Comms International Ltd. But Garland is more than a businessman. He is well known to American and British intelligence. A summary of the report was distributed to the highest-ranking officials in the Clinton-Gore administration in early June 1997. Among the items it contained were details of North Korea’s first launch of a new antiship cruise missile, Russia’s launch of a new generation spy satellite, and a warning from a Mexican drug lord about an upcoming raid by Mexican troops on a farm suspected of housing drug production equipment. But it was the following passage that caught the eye of senior intelligence officials:
Suspected Supernote Distributor Meets with Chinese to _Discuss Undisclosed Business Deal (TSC OC)
(TSC OC) Sean Garland, Managing Director of GKG Comms International Ltd., in Dublin, met recently with Cao Xiaobing, Bureau Director-General within the Central Committee, to discuss unidentified business opportunities according to late May 1997 information. (COMMENT: Garland is suspected of being involved with counterfeiting U.S. currency, specifically, the Supernote, a high quality counterfeit $100 bill.) (W9B2, 3/00/18224-97, ILC)
Aside from his business interests, Garland was secretary general of the Workers’ Party in Ireland. A telling document obtained from Soviet archives revealed that Garland wrote to the secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on September 15, 1986. In the “dear comrade” letter, Garland stated that the Workers’ Party of Ireland had developed a five-year program and asked Moscow to provide one million pounds to help. The cash would be “of benefit to the world struggle for Peace, Freedom and Socialism.” The document was posted on the Internet by Vladimir Bukovsky, the well-known Russian dissident who spent years in the Gulag Archipelago. The meeting between Cao and Garland in 1997 showed how China had become the ideological leader of what was left of the world communist movement. U.S. intelligence officials saw Communist China clandestinely supporting international communists, including those involved in international criminal activities-even those suspected of developing counterfeit $100 bills. The intelligence was unwelcome news for the Clinton-Gore administration and was suppressed, as so many reports exposing the Chinese threat have been suppressed under Bill Clinton’s pro-China foreign policy. The reports have always been handled the same way. The standard procedure has been to dismiss such secret intelligence as “unconfirmed.” When it could not be dismissed, it was simply hidden or ignored. Among those covering up for China were White House National Security Adviser Samuel “Sandy” Berger, a former trade lawyer who worked to establish joint ventures in China for U.S. corporations, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a liberal Georgetown University professor whose views of Communist China are extremely favorable. The Pentagon intelligence report and others like it contradicted the political line laid down by President Clinton: China is not a threat, and China must be “engaged” at all costs-even if U.S. national security and interests are harmed. The China Threat |
